2014-03-10

From "Intersecting Influences in American Haiku" (Thomas Lynch (2001), as available in full online):

In sum, several relevant correlations between the poetic theory of Japanese haiku poets and the theory of the American transcendentalists can be deduced: 1) a belief in the interfusion of the self with external nature, seeking to resolve the subject/object dichotomy and to return us to an awareness of the true self that we share with all other things; 2) an understanding that in order to achieve such an interfusion we need to attain what might be termed an Edenic condition in which we efface the ego-self and reject preconceptions and received beliefs; 3) a recognition that for most of us such an interfusion occurs in fragmentary moments of perception; 4) an awareness that the present time is the only time, and the present place the only place, to achieve such a perception... (pg 121).